This was a very special event to the heart because the planning of this event took about 4 months, the first request having been received from Ragav – an amazing web developer and Mozilla enthusiast at the college. The initial discussions about this event started on the 22nd of November, 2014. Can you believe it?

So we discussed back and forth for the major part of 3 months, found appropriate resource persons, finalized the structure and yes – the picture was perfect. Believe it or not, this was my first chance to meet my counterparts in the Tamil Nadu community. I was excited to meet all of them and host a super cool event. And then strikes disaster. One of lab exams is conveniently (for my teachers) placed on the first day of the event, Thursday the 5th of March. And so, I had to join the team on the second day, i.e. the 6th of March, Friday. Now starts the unfurling of 2 days of simplicity, brilliance and sharing.

Greenery beckoning

From the time I touched down at Coimbatore on Friday, I was treated with utmost care and humility by the folks at Amrita. The road route to Amrita is also a very interesting and spiritual one – mountains, clouds, fauna all along the way; felt like I was going on a hill station.

Got to give it to you guys, everyone else needs to learn how to handle their guests from the hospitality team at Amrita. Despite having over 100 guests for their popular tech fest Anokha, each guest was given individual attention and looked after in the best way possible. During the day, the sun god didn’t have any respite on our poor souls but in came the boon – air conditioned labs. Bless you!

Drive through nature

Some sights are worth sharing. Drive was an excellent one – the college has a railway track which runs parallel to the entrance gate. Can you beat this? I don’t think so. Also there are peahens roaming inside the college. Perfect blend of nature and tranquility.

Well – I reached the college in quick time, and then an amazing sight waits for me. I go on to the terrace of the guest house offered to us and I see this, I’m literally on cloud nine. FYI, that’s the view from the guest house provided by the college. It was in itself a magnificent structure to stay.

On cloud 9!

Day 2

Yes, I finally made it to Day 2 of the event which was planned as a hack day for the participants. The first Mozillian I met from the Chennai / Tamil Nadu community was Viswa, an amazing web developer and a committed Rep. His works talk for himself, leading the FSA community – with innovative App of the Month contests. I hear he reviews close to 100 FxOS apps a day, which I think is totally awesome. His session mainly focused on getting the simulator up and ready using the brand new Developer Edition. Kudos to the organizing team for getting all the installations done, prior to the event.

Hackers trying to simulate their apps

All this was happening in parallel, so that participants can get a feel of what’s happening by doing what we’re telling them to do. Also, exploring the various features the simulator offers. I was personally involved with mentoring the participants there, suggesting what they need to do in case they miss a step – or for a few inquisitive ones show some magic. For mentors, I personally feel these add-ons or tools are a boon:

Responsive view can be used to quickly check how your app (individual HTML documents) looks on a mobile device, whether it fits the phone screen, handy or not. Developer Tools is your right hand ( rather right hand’s right hand) – use the inspector to check which part of code a particular element points to, check out its related CSS & JS content. Manipulate values inside the inspector code are to preview how your app would look, all this would’ve been a lot tougher if it weren’t for the Dev Tools.

Looking into a crisis with Achyuth. 😉

Yes, I did some work as well. Walked around, explained concepts about basic web development – what to learn and what not to learn. Achyuth was another engaging Rep I had a chance to meet during the event. He’s the guy to talk to. You can walk the talk, share stories, listen to amazing stories, get to know how things are done, and the energy I’ve seen in him is simply astounding. You have a query, and he always an answer.

The “what not to do” is more important to know, than the what to do.

First lab – hackers at work

While we 3 were managing one lab, the other lab had some cool guys – Rishav & Ashutosh all the way from Trichy and the organizing team member, Ragav. Rishav and Ashutosh are familiar faces – having seen them in developer events at Bangalore. Ashutosh got all the participants excited by showing some of his cool HTML5 games using canvas and later realized it’s a little advanced for the newbies present over there. Nevertheless, the participants made an honest event to learn canvas and positioning of graph coordinates, etc. Be sure to check out Dive into Canvas if that’s your cup of tea!

Rishav, Viswa, Achyuth and there’s me!

Yes, Day 2 was hugely a success thanks to the super energetic team.

Day 3

Moving on with the fast pace of proceedings, rest of the team had to leave and I was joined later in the evening by my roommate Gautham – I had heard a lot about him and his work for Mozilla, but never actually had a chance to meet him in person. This proved an opportunity to do exactly that.

I had a talk about the Mozilla mission and the FSA program, followed by another talk about webmaker from Gautham. We had an interactive session with the participants and I’ve listed a few FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) below which we were asked by the audience.

FAQs

1. I’ve learnt a bit of web dev and Firefox OS apps. What next?

Next step would be to explore wide variety of Firefox OS API – learn to make use of them to create a wide range of useful apps.

2. What are the club activities that one can take up?

Webmaker parties, office hours, app of the month contest and many more